Mapping Endings, Visualizing New Beginnings: Apocalyptic Expectations and Religious Tolerance and Toleration in the Early Modern Portuguese Atlantic World
14.5.2019
Project status
ongoing
Execution period
2019-2025
REF
CEECIND/00139/2017
Funding scheme
Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P. - Scientific Employment Stimulus
Main research unit
Centre for History of the University of Lisbon
Main institution
School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon
Principal investigator
Ana T. Valdez (CH-ULisboa)
Partner Research Groups & Institutions
Cultures of Knowledge (Oxford); EMLO (Oxford); Apocalypse Now: Apocalyptic Reception and Impact Throughout History (SBL); VU University Amsterdam; Yale University; James Madison University; Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München; University of Oxford
Questions tied to eschatological expectations, in particular, those of messianic and apocalyptic character focusing on the end of this world and its replacement by a new one have become more common since the events of 9/11 and gained new strength following the recent attacks in Europe. Hence, the importance of religion. If the religious difference is used to justify violence, crises, and terrorism, underlining the clash between East and West, then answers are fundamental. Understanding how eschatological expectations may have been at the basis of the formation of networks assembling people from different creeds and races as early as the 17th century and how those mechanisms worked is fundamental today to comprehend how similar networks and movements take shape in our time.
This project is twofold, in the sense that will use information regarding the circulation of ideas of apocalyptic nature in the 17th century, and apply its patterns to the spreading of eschatological expectations in the 21st century.
In the first phase, it aims to scrutinize the history of religious tolerance and the processes of toleration in tandem with eschatological expectations observed in the 17th-century Atlantic basin. Its central questions are: 1) whether there was circulation of eschatological ideas in the space of the Atlantic in the 17th century; 2) whether ideas of an eschatological tone influenced the development of European Atlantic imperial projects; 3) whether the Augustinian view on tolerance as the lesser evil changed dramatically within the early modern period; and above all, 4) whether the fact that eschatological ideas, shared by Catholics, Jews, and Protestants, promoted religious tolerance in a time when Europe was going through some of the fiercest wars of religion, leading to the creation of networks of individuals and contesting the traditional divides. Thus, the goal is to observe the processes of circulation of ideas of an eschatological nature between Europe and the Americas, and how eschatologically-driven networks were created and developed by Catholics, Jews, and Protestants without being disintegrated by the intensity of the religious conflict.
In its second phase, this research aims to use the mapping of the early-modern Atlantic eschatological networks to applying such knowledge to create an interdisciplinary think tank based in Lisbon to discuss eschatological expectations in connection to the present escalation of religious violence. Thus, the creation of a Research Unit within the aegis of the Society for Biblical Studies that will discuss these topics from an interdisciplinary perspective, and lead to the creation of a peer-reviewed series on these topics with an internationally established academic publisher.
